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East Semitic Languages
The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages, Akkadian, Eblaite and possibly Kishite, all of which have been long extinct. They were influenced by the non-Semitic Sumerian language and adopted cuneiform writing. East Semitic languages stand apart from other Semitic languages, which are traditionally called West Semitic, in a number of respects. Historically, it is believed that the linguistic situation came about as speakers of East Semitic languages wandered further east, settling in Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BC, as attested by Akkadian texts from this period. By the early 2nd millennium BC, East Semitic languages, in particular Akkadian, had come to dominate the region. Phonology Modern understanding of the phonology of East Semitic languages can be derived only from careful study of written texts and comparison with the reconstructed Proto-Semitic. Most striking ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of the modern Middle East. Just beyond it lies southwestern Iran, where the region transitions into the Iranian plateau, Persian plateau, marking the shift from the Arab world to Iran. In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran (southwest), Turkey (southeast), Syria (northeast), and Kuwait. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture". It is recognised as the cradle of some of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Consonants
Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have, while some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root ''C-C-C'' consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as or . The glottal consonants and can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as or . The glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are as follows: Characteristics In many languages, the "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation, and may behave as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sibilant Consonant
Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words ''sip'', ''zip'', ''ship'', and ''genre''. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively, . Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their paralinguistic use in getting one's attention (e.g. calling someone using "psst!" or quieting someone using "shhhh!"). Overview In the hissing sibilants and , the back of the tongue forms a narrow channel (is '' grooved'') to focus the stream of air more intensely, resulting in a high pitch. With the hushing sibilants (occasionally termed ''shibilants''), such as English , , , and , the tongue is flatter, and the resulting pitch lower. A broader category is stridents, which include more fricatives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ba‘al
Baal (), or Baʻal, was a title and honorific meaning 'owner' or 'lord' in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Ba'al was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations. The Hebrew Bible includes use of the term in reference to various Levantine deities, often with application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god. That use was taken over into Christianity and Islam, sometimes under the form Beelzebub in demonology. The Ugaritic god Baal (𐎁𐎓𐎍) is the protagonist of one of the lengthiest surviving epics from the ancient Near East, the Baal Cycle. Name Epithets Ba'al's widely used epithet is "rider (or mounter) of the clouds." (''rkb ʿrpt'', cf. ''rkb bʿrbt'' in Ps. 68: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Semitic Language
Proto-Semitic is the Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the linguistic homeland for Proto-Semitic: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, or northern Africa. The Semitic language family is considered part of the broader macro-family of Afroasiatic languages. Dating The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in Akkadian language, Akkadian, dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see Sargon of Akkad) and the Eblaite language, but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in Sumerian language, Sumerian texts from the first half of the third millennium BC. One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur (–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Close-mid Front Unrounded Vowel
The close-mid front unrounded vowel, or high-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ... that represents this sound is . For the close-mid front unrounded vowel that is usually transcribed with the symbol or , see near-close front unrounded vowel. If the usual symbol is , the vowel is listed here. Features Occurrence See also * Index of phonetics articles Notes References * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * External links * {{IPA navigation Close-mid vowels Front vowels Unrounded vowels ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elision
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run together by the omission of a final sound. An example is the elision of word-final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is often pronounced "firs' light" (). Many other terms are used to refer to specific cases where sounds are omitted. Citation forms and contextual forms A word may be spoken individually in what is called the citation form. This corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary. However, when words are spoken in context, it often happens that some sounds that belong to the citation form are omitted. Elision is not an all-or-nothing process: elision is more likely to occur in some styles of speaking and less likely in others. Many writers have described the styles of speech in wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ġayn
The Arabic letter (, or ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being , , , , ). It represents the sound or . In name and shape, it is a variant of ʻayn (). Its numerical value is 1000 (see Abjad numerals). In Persian, it represents ~ and is the twenty-second letter in the new Persian alphabet. ' is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: History Proto-Semitic (usually reconstructed as voiced velar fricative or voiced uvular fricative ) merged with ʻayn in most Semitic languages except for Arabic, Ugaritic and older varieties of the Canaanite languages. The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for , . Biblical Hebrew, as of the 3rd century BCE, apparently still distinguished the phonemes and , based on transcriptions in the Septuagint, such as that of the name " Gomorrah" as ''Gomorrha'' () for the Hebrew ''‘Ămōrā'' (). Canaanite languages, inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ayin (letter)
''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ''ʿayin'' 𐤏, Hebrew ''ʿayin'' , Aramaic ''ʿē'' 𐡏, Syriac ''ʿē'' ܥ, and Arabic ''ʿayn'' (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪒, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . The letter represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative () or a similarly articulated consonant. In some Semitic languages and dialects, the phonetic value of the letter has changed, or the phoneme has been lost altogether. In the revived Modern Hebrew it is reduced to a glottal stop or is omitted entirely. The Phoenician letter is the origin of the Greek, Latin and Cyrillic letters O, O and O. It is also the origin of the Armenian letters Ո and Օ. The Arabic character is the origin of the Latin-script letter Ƹ. Origins The letter name is derived from Proto-Semitic "eye", and the Phoenician letter had the shape of a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
He (letter)
He is the fifth Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''hē'' 𐤄, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''hē'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''hē'' 𐡄, Syriac alphabet, Syriac ''hē'' ܗ, and Arabic alphabet, Arabic ''hāʾ'' . It is also related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪀, Ancient South Arabian script, South Arabian , and Geʽez script, Ge'ez . Its sound value is the voiceless glottal fricative (). The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, proto-Canaanite letter gave rise to the Greek alphabet, Greek Epsilon Ε ε, Etruscan alphabet, Etruscan 𐌄, Latin alphabet, Latin E, Ë and Latin epsilon, Ɛ, and Cyrillic script, Cyrillic Ye (Cyrillic), Е, Yo (Cyrillic), Ё, Ukrainian Ye, Є, E (Cyrillic), Э, and O-hook, Ҩ. ''He'', like all Phoenician letters, represented a consonant, but the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic equivalents have all come to represent vowel sounds. Origins In Proto-Northwest Semitic there were still three voice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aleph (letter)
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''ʾālep'' 𐤀, Hebrew ''ʾālef'' , Aramaic ''ʾālap'' 𐡀, Syriac ''ʾālap̄'' ܐ, Arabic ''ʾalif'' , and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez ''ʾälef'' አ. These letters are believed to have derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph depicting an ox's head to describe the initial sound of ''*ʾalp'', the West Semitic word for ox (compare Biblical Hebrew ''ʾelef'', "ox"). The Phoenician variant gave rise to the Greek alpha (), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А and possibly the Armenian letter Ա. Phonetically, ''aleph'' originally represented the onset of a vowel at the glottis. In Semitic languages, this functions as a prosthetic weak consonant, allowing roots with only two true consonants to be conjugated in the manner of a standa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voiceless Uvular Fricative
The voiceless uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , the Greek chi. The sound is represented by (ex with underdot), or sometimes by (ex with caron), in Americanist phonetic notation. It is sometimes transcribed with (or , if rhotic) in broad transcription. Most languages claimed to have a voiceless uvular fricative may actually have a voiceless uvular fricative trill (a simultaneous and ). Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) note that there is "a complication in the case of uvular fricatives in that the shape of the vocal tract may be such that the uvula vibrates." Although they are not normally differentiated in studies, languages in which they have been (Hebrew, Wolof, as well as the northern and central varieties of European Spanish) have been found to specifically possess the fricative trill. The fricative-trill can be transcribed as (a devoic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
